And yet these days, white students are now only 43 percent of the student body at Rice [University in Houston], where an applicant’s racial identification can become an admissions game changer. This can be especially true during the “committee round” in early spring, when only a few dozen slots might remain for a freshman class expected to number about 1,000.

At that stage, a core group of five to seven bleary-eyed admissions officers will convene for debate around a rectangular laminate table strewn with coffee cups and half-eaten doughnuts as the applications of those students still under consideration are projected onto a 60-inch plasma TV screen.

For most of the nearly 14,000 who applied this year, the final decision — admit or deny — was a relatively straightforward one resolved early on, based on the admissions officers’ sampling of factors like test scores, grades, extracurricular activities and recommendations.

But there are several thousand applicants whose fate might still be in limbo by the committee round because their qualifications can seem fairly indistinguishable from one another. This is when an applicant’s race — or races — might tip the balance.

Oh, come on, this is the oldest myth in the college affirmative action book: that quotas only "tip the balance" when applicants "seem fairly indistinguishable." The white-black SAT gap at Rice back during the 400-1600 scoring days was 271 points, according to The Bell Curve. That was the biggest gap found out of a couple of dozen college. Of course, as the Rice president irritatedly pointed out to me when I called Rice's distinction to his attention at an alumni fundraiser, Rice is the smallest school to play Div. I football, so the proportion of football players' SAT scores counted under the black total is larger at Rice than elsewhere. But, still ...

One reason colleges can pull the wool over the public's eyes on this is that very few people think in systems terms about how this works. It's hard to think about the effect of more than one college doing this at a time. If Rice was the only college in the country to have a quota, then, sure, it could fill its quota with black applicants who are "fairly indistinguishable" from the white norm.

But, funny thing is, Harvard also has a quota, so all those black applicants are going to Harvard instead of Rice. And the black students who are just below the Harvard-bound are going to Stanford and MIT on quotas instead of Rice. So, Rice takes the blacks who would be going to Texas A&M if nobody had a quota, and Texas A&M takes ...

The whole system winds up pretty accurately reproducing at each college the one standard deviation gap seen in the whole population. But that's really hard for most people to grasp.

So, what are the essays for?

“From an academic standpoint, the qualifying records, the test scores, how many AP courses, they may all look alike,” said Chris Muñoz, vice president for enrollment at Rice since 2006. “That’s when we might go and say, ‘This kid has a Spanish surname. Let’s see what he wrote about.’ Right or wrong, it can make a difference.” ...

Still, Rice knows that however much it emphasizes that students should be guided by the honor principle in making such calls, some will seek to stretch the new definitions to their own gain.

“There are players out there,” said Julie Browning, the longtime dean of undergraduate admission at Rice.

Mindful of that, Rice admissions officials try to reconcile whatever boxes an applicant may have checked with the rest of the application.

For example, in its customized supplement to the Common Application, Rice asks an essay question about “the unique life experiences and cultural traditions” that a student might bring.
“If they care about their cultural heritage, it comes through,” Ms. Browning said. “If they’re lukewarm about it, and they’re trying to make it something they care about, it comes through.”

Of course, many of these application essays are written by professional essay writers or the like, so I guess it all evens out in the long run.

Anyway, the message from Rice U. is: If you've got it, play the Race Card. Over and over again. Be as authentically nonwhite as you can. (We can tell!) You've got to feel deep down that you deserve this quota spot. So, don't forget to mention how special your Quinceanera made you feel, especially if you are a boy.

One commenter once noted that Dreams from My Father sounds like the President's monstrously enlarged Diversity Essay.

And yet, at Rice, the chances that a multiracial applicant might be admitted have climbed over the last five years to 23 percent this year. (By contrast, the admission rate for the freshman class as a whole this year was about 19 percent.)

Adding to the confusion in admissions offices is that there is no standard definition, in higher education or elsewhere, of what it means to be mixed race. But the hundreds of colleges, including Rice, that accept the Common Application have allowed students to mark more than one box for several years now.

Over the last five years, the number of applicants to Rice who characterize themselves as of more than one race has skyrocketed to 564 from 8. Multiracial students now account for about 6 percent of the freshman class at Rice, nearly as many as those who identify themselves as “black or African-American.” (Nationally, about 3 percent of Americans identify themselves as mixed-race.)

The reporters' notion that colleges treat "multiracial" as one entity seems highly naive and provincial. I can't imagine any California college treats applicants who check 1. Black and 2. White (You're like, omigod, Obama!) the same as applicants who check 1. Asian and 2. White (Yeah, so what else is new?)

I know from personal experience of a highly marginal case that they're going to treat applicants who assert any black ancestry as BLACK. The black legislators in Sacramento don't ask Berkeley for pictures of the students, they just want to know the numbers.

I am extremely doubtful of the NYT's interpretation in this passage:

Mr. Muñoz, who is ultimately responsible for Rice’s effort to promote diversity on campus, says he has been guided by the template of his own mixed-race family. He is Mexican-American, the first in his family to go to college, while his wife is of Irish descent. They have three grown children.

And, he added, “We’re not out to play ‘gotcha.’ In all things there is an element of trust.”
Still, he acknowledges, such questions give applicants (and their families) wide latitude.

An applicant’s final determination of what to say about race is often made in consultation with a college counselor. Many counselors will convey to families that a multiracial applicant — like one who is black and Chinese — often has a better chance of being admitted to a highly selective college than those in any other racial or ethnic category.

Maybe in the case of an extreme exotic like a black-Chinese mix, a multiracial would be more desirable to admissions offices than just plain black, but the whole tenor of this article -- that admissions offices treat "multiracial" as a group -- is doubtful. For getting into college, black is best, and the one drop rule applies to who gets called black, so anybody who credibly claims to be part black will be treated as black for quota / bragging rights purposes.

I know a young man who is not noticeably black, unless you are looking for it, who wasn't going to put down on his Berkeley application that he was black because he was having an argument with his New Orleans Creole of Color light-skinned father and identified more at the moment with his Armenian mother. He finally did, and then not only he got into Berkeley with below average test scores, but he got a huge scholarship from the African-American Alumni Association.

The more interesting questions are part Hispanics and part Asians.

The federal government has never created a mixed-ethnicity category for people who are part Hispanic. In fact, in the 2010 Census, the feds abolished the concept of ethnicity in general, and didn't bother to provide any conceptual justification for demanding to know if you are Hispanic or Not Hispanic. You just had to tell them because they have more guns than you have.

So, Mr. Munoz should have been asked what he's going to put down on his half-Mexican kids' college applications.

By the way, here's a picture of the President of Mexico with Mexican students at Stanford. Nobody looks like that guy in Machete.

The most interesting question to NYT subscribers is probably what to do if you are part Asian. That gets into the whole question that the NYT hasn't much dealt with: do colleges discriminate against Asians, and if they do why?

Because if they didn't, given the relative size of the White and Asian populations (and the growth rate of the latter), as well as the way these two groups significantly outperform NAMs academically, vs the limited number of spots available, especially at elite institutions, there would never by anything like a proportional representation of NAMs without 'affirmative action'.

Being half-Asian, I understand the situation. When I applied for colleges back in the late 80's, there had been talk in California that Asians were being discriminated against in college admissions. So I did the sensible thing - I checked "White" on all of my applications. I have a plain Anglo-sounding name, so no one's the wiser. I would recommend anyone else in my situation do the same. Just like I'd recommend anyone in a mixed-Hispanic marriage to have your kids adopt the surname of the Hispanic spouse even if it's the wife who is Hispanic. Hey, it's there game - why not game it?

A friend whose daughter (WASP father & Jewish mother) is applying to law schools asked me what she could do to increase her chances of being accepted at an elite law school. My suggestions were (1) get a killer LSAT score and (2) "become" a lesbian.

Steve: Thanks for posting and the commentary. This topic is a minor obsession of mine. My children all fit the "mulit-ethnic hispanic" category. I'm a American suburban gringo, while my wife was born in one of the smaller Andean countries. According to the College Board and their "one-quarter rule" my kids are Hispanic/Latino despite their English surname. NHRP Link

My Calvinistic upbringing makes me deeply ambivalent about the AA advantage for my kids; but I'm reluctant to disadvantage them, at least relative to their own cousins.

FWIW, the list of "College Board approved" national origins fascinates me. For example, Spain makes the list of approved national origins. I wonder what essential element of diversity a Catalonian can deliver that Jean-Pierre or Giacomo or Horst can not. Also, I understand the "Latino-ness" that Brazil could deliver; but what about the poor kid from Suriname or French Guiana. Do they get shafted because they're from non-Iberian South America?

Finally, the College Board language uses the test of the national origin of your "ancestors" which is a deliciously vague term. In the current formulation "hispanicness" is a permamment status. So Tony from Corpus Christi needs AA even if his Tejano ancestors have been in Texas for a handful of generations so long as some ancestor in the past hailed from Veracruz.

"To qualify for this program, you must be at least one-quarter Hispanic/Latino. Hispanic/Latino is an ethnic category, not a racial category, and you may be of any race. For purposes of the NHRP, you must be from a family whose ancestors came from at least one of these countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay or Venezuela."

"The most interesting question to NYT subscribers is probably what to do if you are part Asian. "

Don't admit to being part white unless your white parent happens to be an alumni. Rather, claim that your ancestors are from China's tribal regions, your non-Han family fled to the US to avoid prejudice and persecution, and that you intend to pursue a career in immigration law to help your fellow tribesmen realize the blessings of affirmative action. A little trip to Wikipedia or Netflix will give you all the authenticating details you need. By junior year you will get a little thumbnail profile along side your picture in Harvard's throwaway alumni magazine.

A lady I with whom I work was always wearing Native American jewelry, so one day I asked her about it. "I'm a member of the tribe!" she told me. Brownish blond hair, blue eyes, very fair skin, not exactly what I expect to see when I visit the reservation. She told me that her grandfather, an orphan in the Netherlands just after WW II, was adopted by an American couple. But they were killed in an auto crash shortly thereafter, so he was re-adopted by a Native American couple, who got him tribal membership. That makes my friend one quarter Native American and eligible for all sorts of AA goodies. She always lists her ethnicity as Native American. What a racket!

By the way, I notice that the College Board includes Brazil but not Portugal in its list of Hispanic countries. Wonder why?

regarding professional essay writers, how much do you think dumber but less honorable students beat out smarter honorable students for slots at good schools?

my guess is SATs are hard to cheat on, though grades are probably not hard to. so someone w/awesome grades and low SATs might have been a cheater. though maybe just a hard worker who took lots of extra credit and worked to compensate for their lower IQ--like maybe someone with a 120 IQ can compete w/ someone w/ a 130 IQ in a class if he studies 10 hours more per test or sometghing.

I'm a mutt born with an asian name. Applied to one of the top STEM colleges with slightly subpar grades for an asian and a degree from a nowhere HS.

My essay accurately detailed the isolation and racism I faced growing up in a virtually all white rural red state. I haven't personally met any NAMs that experienced anything like what I went through.

As a rube from rural red america decades ago, I had no ulterior motive or cunning objective. It was just the most personal topic and the easiest to write about.

If anything I was afraid my essay would hurt my chances and second-guessed it a lot. I felt I vented too much and revealed too much residual anger against white people.

No doubt that essay led to the coastal urban hyper-liberal admissions officers accepting me despite my slightly lower GPA. After working to catch up, I excelled there and outperformed most classmates in the real world.

"Of course, as the Rice president irritatedly pointed out to me when I called Rice's distinction to his attention at an alumni fundraiser, ,,,"

Ew!, fundraisers. Yup, Sailer's old.

What about taking the scenic route by doing something interesting travelwise and with some sort of 1st degree before transferring to an elite school? Since you have the test scores and have taken APs, won 't many elite schools take a young person who has been productive and who would still mostly finish a BA with what would've been their freshman class? I'd think this would be of particular benefit to Asians by making them more well-rounded which was last generation's "diversity".

This is the chart that makes it clear just how heavy the anvil--er, thumb--being put on the scale for blacks and Hispanics is.

Only 1-2% of African Americans get over 700 on any section of the SAT. That's slightly under 2000 blacks. Now, even if you figure that the overlap between Math, Reading, and Writing is total--that is, assume that the 2100+ group is 2000 students and not fewer--it means that elite schools have 2000 blacks that can be considered on par with their other applicants.

Most elite schools want about 10% blacks. Figure around 200 per school for elite schools. That runs through the 2000 pretty quickly.

Six percent of African Americans get over 600 on any section of the SAT. That's a shockingly low number. Hispanics are, as always, slightly better but still quite low.

By the time you get down to the top-ranked publics, the average african american score is going to be in the high 400s, low 500s.

Expand on the idea of the professional essay writer (or the rich school guidance counsellor). Using the essay does not just get the college more minorities; it also gets it more rich kids, who will be told to write minority-sounding essays.

Recall how rich kids are now mentally handicapped in huge numbers, getting extra time on exams.

At some point schools are going to be giving preference to those who can write a check for the full tuition rather than need financial aid.

Going to? I have no doubt whatever that, as a 100% non-diverse suburban white kid, my son's acceptance at several highly selective colleges this year was significantly more influenced by the data on the CSS form than his sterling academic qualifications.

With some of these clowns I'm convinced both that "white boy National Merit Scholar" didn't earn a single admissions point, and that there is a "parental gullibility" index in use that allows admissions officers to identify potential marks for academic-industrial-complex vampires to drain dry in the service of subsidizing "diversity".

Man, did those letters of acceptance reach nauseating depths of whorish truckling to status-vanity. "You're so select! You're so elite!" (Translation: "We contrived to increase our application numbers to a level that lends a false patina of prestige to our low, low acceptance rates.)

"Because if they didn't, given the relative size of the White and Asian populations... as well as the way these two groups significantly outperform NAMs academically...there would never by anything like a proportional representation of NAMs without 'affirmative action'

The question was not "do colleges discriminate against whites and Asians" it was "do colleges discriminate against Asians", meaining, "in favor of whites."

"Re: Black-Chinese mixes, they should just average out to whites on most behavioral measures anyway:"

Why would this be the case? Black-Chinese should be slightly different for the outcomes of either monoracial group contributing to their gene pool not typical of a non-contributing gene pool.

I've noticed white guys will tend to do something obsessive in nature like gamble or collect or drink. They don't seem as prone to the excesses of the bling bearing lower class or of the nouveau-riche as either Asians or blacks do. Even their sexual excesses don't seem so extreme, they'll usually stick with a trophy wife that they might exchange for a younger version later on, no porn stars nor need for scores of sexual conquests. And the average white guy is a creature of habit, through and through. To know this is to be able to love him.

You might get a similar total IQ score or a similar average income after college but their intellectual strengths will be different and so will their lifestyle by comparison. I'm surprised at the pseudo-calculus you're intuitively using to make this assertion.

Again, I don't understand: Why isn't everyone putting down Hispanic or part black? How can anyone prove that I'm not part black somewhere in my roots, even if I do use make up of a shade called "blushing ivory"? Plus, anyone living in Asia, Europe or Africa could have been expelled from Spain 600 years ago. What's a one fourth? Does that mean I must have a grandparent who deeply believes herself to be of culture connected to Spain, sings the right songs and cooks the right food? Almost anyone can fake such a grandparent.

"And yet these days, white students are now only 43 percent of the student body at Rice"

"White" of course includes all sorts of people who are not European. The real issue is that whites are strongly underrepresented at elite universities today. This is not about fairness, it's about who wins and who loses.

This is silly. Blacks and Hispanics are already overwhelmingly multiracial, and overwhelmingly identify with their nonwhite ancestry only... the only "multiracials" you see a significant number of are White/Asian. Who doubts this?

i guarantee a rather large amount of the black students at Rice, or for that matter, Duke, Notre Dame, Northwestern, or USC, are on the football or basketball teams. I once saw something that the average SAT of the Rice football/basketball teams is around 1100, so this would account for much of that gap.

I see three people (out of 9 students) that I'd accept on face value as being Mexican. Starting from the left, #'s 2, 6 and 7 (and maybe 8, if he looked less like my coworker named Johnson). In Canada, the French/Native hybrids were able to get an official classification, Metis, that persists to this day. I'm sure we'll something similar arise in the US.

The most irritating thing is that Spaniards and descendants of los conquistadores get special privileges. When the hell have white Spaniards faced discrimination in the U.S or anywhere in the Western world for that matter? Never. They were imperialists, second only to the English. I guess it's okay though because they were slightly more exotic imperialists?

The mixed category is the next round in the great diversity game. It's been an issue since the 80's but it will become much more so thanks to the explosion of white girl/black dude pairings. Just going to a walmart you see the number of white girls in pajama bottoms, flip flops and bleached hair in a toss up pushing a mixed baby in a stroller has become pretty common. The payoff for identifying as black is huge, but who knows-maybe self identifying as mixed may take on some kind of cool cachet.

BTW,I've heard some remark about how it seems that WF/BM pairings seem to yield more girls. Any stats on this? I suspect the reason could be that wandering around in public you see more girls with the mothers since boys are more likely to be left at the house on their own at even a fairly young age, so some people imagine more girls are produced from such pairings.

My prediction is that the next big affirmative action controversy will involve the treatment of people who are one-quarter Asian and three-quarters white. It's because white/Asian pairings first became commonplace in the late 1960's and early 1970's, following the 1965 liberalization of immigration laws and the Vietnam War. Presumably, many of the Hapa children born to these couples married whites when they came of age, and now their own children (1/4A, 3/4W) are starting to be old enough to be applying to college.

It's been my impression that being one-quarter Asian isn't usually enough to affect one's racial identity, the One Drop Rule not being applicable, the point is this has been a largely theoretical question up to now. That's changed, and it's now a very real question facing admissions officers.

SouthernAnonyia: The reason why Spaniards are considered "Hispanic" is because, well, they are. If you ("you" being the legislative/bureaucratic entity that gets to make these sort of God-like decisions) consider a Hispanic surname as some sort of indicator of "oppressed" status, then there is no way, logical or illogical,even for a politician, to exclude the Spanish.The Portugese?I am sure that if they had enough political power on a national basis, they would be included in affirmative action as well. The hamlet of Farmingville, Long Island (yes, the one in the movie) used to be full of Portuguese, before the Mexicans replaced them. The Portuguese commonly worked as laborers, esp. with stone or concrete, and I have no doubt that they encountered some prejudice. The local media failed to celebrate their vibrancy, however.The NY Times is confused because they are now confronting the inevitable result of the affirmative action they championed: complete chaos.

"Re: Black-Chinese mixes, they should just average out to whites on most behavioral measures anyway:

http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2009/12/blasians.html"

Slight problem with this is: Asians don't have a 110 IQ, but probably 105 at best. North Asians with a Black grandparent would be the similar comparison to Europeans on some traits (overall genetic distance to Africans is about the same, IQ), but would be sharply divergent on others (looks for at least one to be sure, probably collectivism for another, the analytic versus holistic approach for another possibility, and many aspects of sexual and social behaviour).

Analogy: it's like trying to derive North Asians from an Ashkenazi-Filipino. (112 + 95 )/ 2 evens out to around the North Asian IQ (if we took the more conservative 110 IQ for Jews and a lower IQ for Flips like 90, we'd use a population of Ashkenazis with one Flip grandparents, like Rob Schneider), and on looks the relative lightness from Ashkenazis shifts the dark SE Asianness of the Flips up to a more North East Asian pallour, but let's be real, a population comprised of the resulting mixes probably wouldn't quite think like Chinese or Japs.

"No doubt that essay led to the coastal urban hyper-liberal admissions officers accepting me despite my slightly lower GPA. After working to catch up, I excelled there and outperformed most classmates in the real world."

You're making this up. Such an essay definitely would've made you look like a loser decades ago when there wasn't quite so much desperation over selecting for diversity. Also, a real Asian wouldn't have whined in a formal essay back in the day. Doubtful as well that you were seriously marginalized by the Evangelical Christian inhabitants of a Red State. More than likely you had higher status due to the erroneous belief that all Asians were superior to all whites in all ways except social and athletic.

(BS detector still sounding.)

And, yes, Kenny, test preps can improve your SAT scores just as simply taking it twice can raise your score. Asians are just hyper-competitive people who tend to get locked into the battle for whatever the prize happens to be. Sure everyone wants to go to Harvard but not everyone can or should. I suggest Asians aren't being discriminated against whatsoever. You'd see some amazing achievements out of such students to a proportion matching their actual enrollment at elite institutions. You don't. Genius IQ alone doesn't create a genius in either creativity or accomplishment.

Getting stuck on the meme that if-only-I-had-a-white-surname, my superior qualifications would get me in, period isn't a sign of "super high IQ". BTW, I thought the most competitive U's did face-to-face interviews.

"No doubt that essay led to the coastal urban hyper-liberal admissions officers accepting me despite my slightly lower GPA. After working to catch up, I excelled there and outperformed most classmates in the real world."

You're making this up. Such an essay definitely would've made you look like a loser decades ago when there wasn't quite so much desperation over selecting for diversity. Also, a real Asian wouldn't have whined in a formal essay back in the day. Doubtful as well that you were seriously marginalized by the Evangelical Christian inhabitants of a Red State. More than likely you had higher status due to the erroneous belief that all Asians were superior to all whites in all ways except social and athletic.

Have no idea if the poster is telling the truth, but if he had gone to an Evangelical college,I doubt that have been discriminated against. Say what you will about the "thumpers", but they are ecstatic about the spread of evangelical Christianity in Asia. We've got Chinese and Korean Baptist churches everywhere down here, and mixed evangelical couples are becoming pretty common.

But the reason they do is that elite universities admissions polices are screwed up. They place too much emphasis on stellar grade point averages in a grade inflation environment. This rewards obedient goody two shoes, as opposed to likely greatest contributors in real life. It rewards obedient to authority girls over rebellious guys, and higher performing nams relative to bright as hell but alpha rebellious whites.

The later is the reason for the admissions policy shift.

What should be given greatest weight is demo'd IQ combined with creativeness and brilliant insight, not drudge like obedience to never slacking off. Of course complete slackerdom for IQ levels is also, generally, a bad indicator.

But less often than supposed. See Craig Ventor's, the guy that first brain brilliant insights and management first sequenced the human genome.

"This rewards obedient goody two shoes, as opposed to likely greatest contributors in real life. It rewards obedient to authority girls over rebellious guys, and higher performing nams relative to bright as hell but alpha rebellious whites."

Great point, Doug1. The brightest guys in my graduating class in '85 were a bit edgy and wild. Most of them your dad wouldn't want you dating.

Consistently, they got into in depth analysis of politics and culture while also reading vastly more than was required in any level of course at our very competitive high school. To be honest, most of us honor society goody two shoes types still haven't caught up with these guys intellectually.

"on the one hand, you don't want to give NAMs a preference, but you definitely want handicap Asians "

No I don't. I want to stop letting them in, cancel some PRC visas, deport the ones that have overstayed their visas, but I definitely don't want to handicap any of them. I'd be proud if my state university would become purely meritocratic, and thereby became whatever% Asian.

On balance not even remotely. They may lose out some on SATs but more than make up for it by joining Jews in being immune from the population percentage restriction that is put on Whites. Asians would have a lower chance of success on average if they pretended to be white and an improved chance of success if they pretended to be NAMs.

."Rather, claim that your ancestors are from China's tribal regions...etc"

This sounds like the best strategy. IIRC there's supposed to be tribes along the northern edge who look mixed white.

."The most irritating thing is that Spaniards and descendants of los conquistadores get special privileges...second only to the English"

If the whole point of AA was as a kind of stealth tribal warfare to undermine the original majority / dominant ethnic group then it would make perfect sense.

In fact nothing about AA makes sense unless the destruction of the original majority was always its true purpose.

"on the one hand, you don't want to give NAMs a preference, but you definitely want handicap Asians"

and people like this

"Asians are discriminated against because a campus full of them would be a drab, dreary place that no one would be interested in applying to."

are the same people and they do it because they like stirring.

.The system should be consistent either way. Either it's based roughly on population percentage across the board and Asian and Jews lose a lot of their places to Whites or it's SATs across the board and NAMs lose a lot of their places to Whites. The existing system is blatantly anti-white in both directions.

Why do African-Americans tend to have the last names of Presidents? Washington, Jefferson, Jackson etc.

Those are admirable names, and some blacks chose or were given them.

Yet there are hardly any blacks with the surname Lincoln. AFAIK slaves generally didn't have surnames, so once freed after the Civil War they could still take on the Lincoln name if they chose. Perhaps the name was considered too sacrosanct for use, similar to the way babies in English-speaking countries are almost never named Jesus?

Why do African-Americans tend to have the last names of Presidents? Washington, Jefferson, Jackson etc.

Those are admirable names, and some blacks chose or were given them.

Yet there are hardly any blacks with the surname Lincoln. AFAIK slaves generally didn't have surnames, so once freed after the Civil War they could still take on the Lincoln name if they chose. Perhaps the name was considered too sacrosanct for use, similar to the way babies in English-speaking countries are almost never named Jesus?

The question is, why do white people accept being discriminated against? In fact some get off on the idea that some fellow white is getting screwed so a half-black, half-Eskimo, lesbian can get his/her job or college slot.

Not only do they feel good about, they feel self-righteous about it. There's always been something odd about White America.

Instapundit has been covering the Student Loan stuff. Basically, Blacks and Hispanics and some Asians (Vietnamese, etc.) get full/partial rides, with little debt. White kids must take on substantial debts which they can never pay off, resulting in debt peonage.

Not very sustainable. Taken to its extremes only very Wealthy White kids go to College, and nearly every non-White.

You're making this up. Such an essay definitely would've made you look like a loser decades ago when there wasn't quite so much desperation over selecting for diversity. Also, a real Asian wouldn't have whined in a formal essay back in the day. Doubtful as well that you were seriously marginalized by the Evangelical Christian inhabitants of a Red State. More than likely you had higher status due to the erroneous belief that all Asians were superior to all whites in all ways except social and athletic.

I hope you two realize your posts are an embarassment to any claims of White Supremacy.

First, 3 decades ago in the early 80s the admissions officers at top STEM centers like Cambridge and the Bay Area were full on multicult and anti-fly over red neck. Where do you think the leftist centers for all that hatred directed against Reagan was most intense?

Second, I said I was a mutt raised in flyover America - not a bitter tea eating stoic Asian. Because I was raised in a nearly pure white rural area, even being a mutt was as good as being from another planet.

Finally, my essay was not an incoherent whine like your posts. It was detailed and factual account of the everyday matter-of-fact white racism that coastal leftist and NAMs constantly decry but mostly have never experienced.

"In fact nothing about AA makes sense unless the destruction of the original majority was always its true purpose."

I've reached the same conclusion, Wandrin. Stumbling upon iSteve gave me brief hope that AA had run it's course and some entity was encouraging whites to assert themselves biologically and socially. It seems that though there are some groups of whites who are vying for dominance in the present chaos, the original majority won't reemerge.

I'm amazed that the campaign against WASP hegemony seems to have been the instinctive, holistic, reactionary strategy of highly intelligent people. The appeals were almost always to the emotions: from shaming white Christians for failing to live up to their moral code to the pied piper youth movement that drove a wedge between the WWII generation and the Boomers. I'm not even certain anyone had a target of population reduction to the point of eradication in mind.

Although, do note, I've been deliberately targeted by the diversity squad and can say the people doing it often understood what effect they might have on me as an individual by insulting me in certain ways or giving me bad advice. Sailer here must necessarily be on the wrong side in this battle due to certain associations: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

Like to think that this admission nonsense will kill the reputations of these schools

but isteve did a post a while ago that showed that a self interested and wealthy alumni population can prop up the elite status of a school with a demented admissions program for a long time ie generations

At some point the emperor has no clothes? But if the entire society is a soviet groupthink dystopia by then, then having no intellectual clothes is the accepted norm

"I'm not even certain anyone had a target of population reduction to the point of eradication in mind."

If you have a group of people that brain-washes its children to believe the whole world is their mortal enemy and to survive they need to constantly strive to weaken their strongest *potential* enemies as a form of pre-emptive self-defence then a lot of things suddenly make perfect sense.

Are you saying that they are to make sure that that the kids who say they are black are authentically, culturally, mentally black? To make sure that racial quotas are filled by people who are dedicated Blacks, Mexicans, etc.?

"Because I was raised in a nearly pure white rural area, even being a mutt was as good as being from another planet."

Oh, b.s.

I was raised in a nearly pure White rural area, too. The 7 non-Whites in the whole school were treated with kindness and offered friendship, with the guileless expectation that the non-Whites would act nice back. And virtually all of them did.

White people, including us rural rubes, only get cranky about diversity when it reaches a critical mass such that the Diversities starting thinking in "us" vs. "you" terms (like you did).

Wandrin: The one where Asians are four-times over-represented by population percentage. How are they going to improve on that by pretending to be white?

Well, empirically, there have been quite a lot of Asian or half-Asian commenters on this blogsite (and on this very thread) who've said they pretended to be white, or had their children do so, in order to improve their college admissions chances. But I've never come across a single white who said he pretended to be Asian for the same reason. On the other hand, huge numbers of whites are always talking about maybe pretending to be part black/Hispanic on exactly similar grounds.

And although Asians are certainly heavily over-represented at elite academic institutions, that over-representation is much, much lower than their over-representation in the upper-reaches of more objective measures, such as PSAT/SAT scores or GPAs or top academic/math/science competitions. So either there's a pretty healthy amount of anti-Asian admissions "diversity/discrimination" going on, or all sorts of other subjective factors must be lining up in pretty coincidental fashion.

You have to admire how well Obama has gamed the system. He correctly identified the tremendous advantage of being an authentic "African American" and dedicated his life to fill that niche and pass as one. Even he definitely is not that ethnics.

On the other hand, the system is working. It selected or allowed to select a very intelligent, disciplined, focused man to reach the top post.

"If you have a group of people that brain-washes its children to believe the whole world is their mortal enemy and to survive they need to constantly strive to weaken their strongest *potential* enemies as a form of pre-emptive self-defence then a lot of things suddenly make perfect sense."

Hate to tell you Wandrin, the Catholics do it too. The Slavic peoples, who are often Catholic, will muscle any WASP types out of the way if they find it expedient just as will hispanics. It's everyone against WASPs. I'm rather more concerned with Catholic totalitarianism in the guise of socialism with strict legislation on everything from abortion to adultery. These guys have the numbers as well as the bureaucracy.

AA is a racial (or ethnic) spoils system for admissions to universities. All the complexity of the process exists only to hide this fact, because a naked racial spoils system would offend the sensibilities of most everyone in the US. A complex system of essays and weighing this and that lets both the winners and losers in this system tell themselves a story about seeking out unique experiences and the value of diversity.

The best way to fight AA is to call this exactly what it is, and to call for eliminating all this added complexity. If we need 10% of the spots in the Ivy League to be held by blacks for some broader social goal, then we should simply do that, without any make-believe that we're doing some other thing. Eliminating the needless complexity will lead, sooner or later, to eliminating AA entirely.

>Yet there are hardly any blacks with the surname Lincoln.[...] once freed after the Civil War they could still take on the Lincoln name if they chose. Perhaps the name was considered too sacrosanct for use<

RKU"Well, empirically, there have been quite a lot of Asian or half-Asian commenters on this blogsite (and on this very thread) who've said they pretended to be white, or had their children do so, in order to improve their college admissions chances."

Well maybe i'm wrong, however if whites are under-represented both on headcount terms *and* SAT terms and Asians are (for the sake of argument) four times OVER-represented on headcount then surely logically they'd have to be more than four times UNDER-represented in SAT terms to even have a chance of gaining an advantage by claiming to be white?

If NAMs are massively over-represented if the selection was based on SATs and Asians and Jews are massively over-represented if the selection was based on headcount then i can see an advantage in an Asian claiming to be a NAM but not otherwise.

"The one where Asians are four-times over-represented by population percentage. How are they going to improve on that by pretending to be white?"

What makes you think that they wouldn't be five-times over-represented if it weren't for discrimination?

"If NAMs are massively over-represented if the selection was based on SATs and Asians and Jews are massively over-represented if the selection was based on headcount then i can see an advantage in an Asian claiming to be a NAM but not otherwise."

It's actually quite simple, you ready?

An Asian needs a higher SAT score to get into an exclusive university than a white. Period.

Therefore it is advantageous for an Asian with an "Asian SAT Score" to compete with whites with their lower scores.

"Therefore it is advantageous for an Asian with an "Asian SAT Score" to compete with whites with their lower scores."

No it isn't.

If Asians are already four-times over-represented by headcount and whites are under-represented by both headcount and SATs then there is no gain in advantage by claiming to be white for all those Asians that get places already i.e all the Asian top scorers, because they get places anyway.

The only possible gainers would be Asians who are much lower down in the Asian rankings i.e. the ones who didn't get places.

So what you're actually saying is...

"Therefore it is advantageous for an Asian who doesn't have a place-winning "Asian SAT Score" to compete with whites with their lower scores"

which given that Whites are massively discriminated against on both headcount and SAT scores means the lowest scoring Asians would be competing against the highest scoring Whites.

Now if the gap is big enough then maybe the bottom 20% of Asian college candidates can compete with the top White 20%. I don't know but that's the only segment where logically i can see an advantage.

Hence why i said it would make more sense for them to pretend to be NAMs as even a low-scoring Asian might still have an edge there.

"The whole system winds up pretty accurately reproducing at each college the one standard deviation gap seen in the whole population."

no way. at the top universities it creates a between-groups difference much larger than that. much larger. the affirmative action effect doesn't "scale up" linearly, it scales up geometrically.

you end up with a freshman class at some of these universities with 500 brilliant europeans, 500 brilliant east asians, and 0 brilliant africans. you probably get 20 african guys who would be decent science or engineering students at the state university.

let's face it. there are very, VERY few brilliant africans in most science and engineering fields at the professional level. like, less than 10 guys in the entire world. whereas there are so many brilliant europeans and east asians that they can only stand out if they're actual geniuses.

saying the gap scales up linearly is kind of like saying the number of mexicans in NCAA basketball scales up linearly. they are DRAMATICALLY less good at basketball when you step up from the high school level to the college level. there are 40 million mestizos in the US yet the number of mexican DI players is literally near zero. again, there's maybe 10. then take the next step up to professional basketball and they're gone.

every time you take a step up to the next level of competition, the average between-groups capability level is intensified. after taking 2 steps up, from high school, to college, to pro, the gap is HUGE between the best performing groups and the worst. affirmative action only keeps a couple guys around and they're like 2 or 3 standard deviations behind, not 1.

Wandrin: If Asians are already four-times over-represented by headcount and whites are under-represented by both headcount and SATs then there is no gain in advantage by claiming to be white for all those Asians that get places already i.e all the Asian top scorers, because they get places anyway.

I think looking at these over/under-representation ratios causes confusion when we're considering elite institutions, which draw from just the top of the distribution curve. Remember, we're actually comparing something like the top couple of percent of Asians with the top one percent of whites.

A much easier way of seeing what's going on is just to look at the mean test scores of the different ethnicities, which are available for lots of universities and have sometimes been discussed on this blogsite. For example, the reason everyone knows that Hispanics are getting a "diversity boost" is that the mean Hispanic SAT score for admitted students is always far below that for whites, with sometimes a gap of a hundred points or more. But on every such table I've ever seen, the Asian/white gap is generally of comparable size, though usually smaller, and in the other direction. So this would seem to show that Asians are facing a "diversity barrier" relative to whites, and would indeed benefit substantially if they pretended to be white, just as they all seem to believe. I think the blogger Steve Hsu had a detailed post about this recently.

Now the likely existence of this sort of "Asian quota" has caused all sorts of other problems as well. Since Asians tend to be academically-oriented, as their population has grown more middle-class/affluent in recent decades, a higher and higher percentage have applied to top schools. Meanwhile, the Asian population itself has also grown rapidly. So I'd think there's been a huge rise in the number of Asian applicants, but since there's a relatively fixed Asian quota, the percentage of Asians admitted has dropped dramatically. I'll bet this is the main cause of the gigantic "academic arms race" at heavily Asian schools, which is part of what probably makes people like Amy Chua behave in such a extreme manner. And this sort of ultra-extreme academic focus makes life miserable for everyone at those schools, Asian and non-Asian alike.

I actually think I came up with a reasonable solution to all these ethnicity/admissions problems a few years back, not perfect but better than the current system which is totally biased and also sometimes crazy.

Now it seems to me that "diversity" is actually a reasonable goal for elite educational institutions, but the problem is that "diversity" is defined in ways a handful of admissions officers like, and ignored in ways they don't like. So the children of Latin American Oligarchs probably get a huge "diversity" boost into Yale, and self-identified gays might be over-represented by 500% or whatever, but children of Midwestern Christians come up snake-eyes. So it probably would be better to "automate" the diversity, rather than have it defined by individuals with an agenda. Also, admitting students whose ability or academic background is just too weak to handle the work benefits neither them, their classmates, nor the institution.

Consider that most elite universities admit something like 5-10% of their applicants, but that probably the vast majority of those applicants could handle the work and perform adequately if they'd been chosen. As the news articles always describe, a portion of the pool is immediately selected based on academic performance, another portion immediately excluded for exactly the same reason, and the admissions people then spend all their time going over the large remainder, applying all sorts of complex ideological and personal factors. The obvious and much fairer solution is to select this group based on totally random lot.

So the incoming class at an elite university would consist of two segments, perhaps roughly equal in size. The first would be the top academic candidates, selected by objective criteria in direct rank-order. And the second would be a random selection from the remaining 80% or 90% of applicants whose academic record demonstrated they could handle the work and perform adequately. Since this much larger applicant pool is certainly more "diverse" than the first group, the resulting student body would certainly be considerably "diverse", but diverse in all possible ways, rather than just in the ways the admissions bureaucrats like. To a considerable extent, this process would also to reduce the extreme over-representation of all groups relative to today, but do so in a way that was completely fair and objective. There would certainly still be a lot of over-representation given the rank-order segment, but probably much less so than at present.

Another advantage is that under the current system I'd guess that lots of talented students from less "academically aggressive" backgrounds tend not to even apply to top schools because they wrongly think they'd never have a chance of getting in, and their places are filled by less talented students with Tiger Mom-like parents. Under a random selection system, more of the first type of student would say "why not---I have as good a chance as anyone" and apply, thereby broadening the applicant pool and further diversifying the resulting intake. And there'd probably be a sharp decline in the high school academic arms race since most students would realize they could never get in via being in the first group, so why make yourself miserable by studying 100 hours per week when it wouldn't have any impact on your getting in as part of the "lucky" second group.

Since luck rather than personal ability or effort (or corruption) would account for such a sizable fraction of the class, I'd think it might also reduce some of the resulting arrogance or bad personal behavior.

The book sounds very familiar except she probably had it easier as a female hapa. As a guy having lived it, it's depressing to think about reading someone else's similarly shitty life story.

JSM is naive, ignorant and/or an outright liar to think such things could never have happened, especially 30yrs ago in once all white rural fly over. It didn't help that I grew up in the wake of Vietnam, farm aid, the rise of Japanese auto industry and gutting of the rust belt and other fly over manufacturing.

To keep this in perspective, many individuals have had it much worse. Refugees and immigrants like Vietnamese boat people, ethnic Chinese from SE Asia, Whites from South Africa, Coptics from Egypt, Slavs from Ukraine, etc. However, there is relatively little real racism today in mainstream America.

If JSM is saying Northern European ethnics are the least racists today that is a different arguement.

In fact, Whites seem well to the point of self-loathing and beyond to targeting vitriolic hatred to their co-ethnics. I've been shocked to see how some affluent WASP parents neglect their own children because they feel it's socially unjust to favor the already fortunately born.

Asian overachievement and resulting better college applications is not only due to higher IQ, but also to tiger mother families and cultures as well as the correlated fact that they disproportionately apply to the top Ivy and STEM college.

It's striking how anti-intellectual and lazy mainstream white culture is. The brightest white kids I grew up with had virtually no ambition beyond the local community or state.

I'm also amazed by white kids who choose to study something like native american basket weaving at soemplace like Reed. There are a fair number of bright white kids kicking back at schools and in majors far below their abilities. Some of it is because they have a trust fund or daddy in Wall Street who can get them a job nonetheless, but most are just dreamers.

They must exist, but I've never met a really bright Asian kid who was in a major or college that was noticibly below their intellectual or competitive abilities.

Unlike Whites, Asians hugely cluster in the Ivies, top STEM programs and lucrative programs like medicine. It's no surprise then that even overrepresented as they are, Asians are still discriminated against to keep their percentages from going even higher. Read about anti-Asian admissions policies here.

Truth nailed it. The proof is that there is growing number of Hapas who go out of their way to change their kids name to a non-Asian name. I've never, ever heard the reverse.

Where do live rockin' robin? I think only in a few of the large cities that have, or rather had, significant white ethnic enclaves, would "Catholics" tend to be anti-WASP. This isn't 1910. Are they Poles with names ending in "isky" pretending to be Jewish?

I would hope so. Affirmative action for underperforming minorities is a given, at least with the current folks running things. They have to discriminate against someone, the only question is how that [white man's] burden should be spread.

I think the harm of AA should be spread out amongst white gentiles, Jews, Asians, and any other over-represented minority, Hindoos come to mind.

As for gaming the system by claiming NAM-ness, what could schools do? Most of the pro-AA people have been claiming that race has no genetic/biological basis. There are people who are 1/4, or an 1/8 black who consider themselves black. Are schools going to ask for family photos? Will they institute reverse paper bag tests? Bring out the calipers to measure prognathy, etc. to determine whose features are negroid enough?

"I think only in a few of the large cities that have, or rather had, significant white ethnic enclaves, would "Catholics" tend to be anti-WASP."

I've had a handful of Catholics who were co-religionists while not all being of the same ethnic background take it upon themselves to correct what they believed were my errors in judgement on matters ranging from friendship to the expression of sexuality. Basically, they assumed a bit of interpersonal discord was a manifestation of that WASP racism you see on TV. The Jews involved at least looked for a deeper cause of the "racism" though they were on the wrong track as well. I don't think the state matters since the Catholics involved were originally from other states or countries: Kansas, Texas, Illinois, the Philipines, Nicaragua.

As Sailer stated at one time or another, our greatest antipathies are often reserved for those people who are most like us.

I'm also amazed by white kids who choose to study something like native american basket weaving at soemplace like Reed.

Wut? Either Reed has changed a helluva lot or...In 2000 or so, Reed didn't even have a business program, much less any angry studies departments. The academics were brutal, and every degree required a roughly masters level thesis. The only soft class was "Natural Science" for nonscience majors. The college didn't even have affirmative action.

As much as I hate to admit it, I think g as an all encompassing indicator of ability is overrated at least wrt SAT scores. It matters both what you train your mind to do and what your biological strengths are. An IQ test, on the other hand, does a much better job of pinpointing actual capability.

Disappointing that the multicult graduates from high status universities are no less prone to promoting themselves as a deserving elite than the WASPs they're replacing and that they attempt laying claim to a hereditary right to rule. Yet few, if any, evidence the leadership or teaching ability so important for intellectuals in the Western tradition. I propose revisiting the list of accomplishments that used to be printed on the SAT booklet or score report. Leadership ability as well as enough extracurricular activities to demonstrate you were either an excellent student or a genius used to be as important as scores and grades.

I am German/British Protestant and I work with lots of Catholics in Chicago and I certainly don't see any sort of animosity at all. We are all just white people. Italians and Greeks are perceived to be somewhat different, but the rest of us (British, German, Irish, Polish) are just regular American whites.

I agree that the ability to write a check for $50,000 and not need financial ad is going to matter a lot more to these schools in the future.

I saw this show about asian-white mixed children in Vietnman who were ostracized by their community - had to live in some sort of a shelter because no one wanted to go near them. And this was in a big city!! They were all looking to get out and into USA. Somehow the show painted whites as the racists for not letting them do that. And no, they did not go to any Elite school in Vietnam. LOL

What it comes down to is this: whites are suckers.

Now let's go on with the discussion about how Asians are descriminated in the white countries.

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